Newsroom

Newsroom

Posted Mar 05, 2007 by

Okay, it is not MMORPG related, but this is big video game news. Nielsen reports that 41% of all TV households have a console game system.

The number of video game consoles in U.S. television households has expanded by 18.5% since the fourth quarter of 2004, according to a new report released today by Nielsen Wireless and Interactive Services, a service of The Nielsen Company. In the fourth quarter of 2006 there were 45.7 million homes with video game consoles, representing 41.1% of all TV households, compared to 39.1% (43 million) in 2005, and 35.2% (38.6 million) the previous year.

The increase in both the number and the percentage of U.S. TV households with video game consoles is significant given that the number of total television households has risen 1.6% during the same period.

The report, "The State of the Console," incorporates extensive data on video game console usage from Nielsen's National People Meter (NPM) sample of television households as well as its quarterly Home Technology Report. It is the first in a series of analytic studies from Nielsen examining trends in the video game industry.

The launch of Nielsen's GamePlay Metrics later this year will, for the first time, deliver metered video game usage and demographic data by game title, genre and platform. It will provide advertisers, agencies, hardware manufacturers and game developers with independent, high-quality, quantitative information for negotiating the buying and selling of in-game and around-game advertising.